Cantor Fitzgerald (thing)

The bond trading company, Cantor Fitzgerald was almost unknown outside financial circles on wall street until September 11th, 2001. Their offices occupied the 101st thru 105th floors atop 1 World Trade Center. On September 11th, the lives of 658 of their employees were cut short during the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The name Cantor Fitzgerald has now become synonymous with loss, a tragedy of a scale few in the US have seen outside of a War.

There were so many tragic losses that day; including fire fighters, police officers, Windows of the World, Carr Futures, Marsh & McLennan etc. But the numbers lost by this one firm were so high that more than 1/5th of the NY Times Portraits of Grief featured stories of those lost at Cantor. Daily, for over a year, at least one of those tragic losses at Cantor were featured; telling the stories of just one of the 658 lost that day.

There was much negative press following 9/11 when the company stopped paying the salaries of the 658 who died, however the company was determined to stay in business so they could help take care of the victim's families. In order to do so there was no way the 325 remaining employees could afford to pay the salaries of the 658 who parished. Eight months after the tragedy Cantor embarked on an ad campaign centered around the loss on 9/11 featuring the sorrow and guilt that many of the survivors felt, the ads were not without controversy but those involved were driven to keep the company alive for the families of those lost.

The Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund was established September 14, 2001, the fund provides assistance for childcare, tuition, housing, and living expenses and so on. Staffed by volunteers and underwritten by Partners of Cantor Fitzgerald as well as Howard Lutwick himself - 100% of the money donated to this fund is given directly to the victim's families. The fund was established with a $1 million dollar donation by Howard, by December, 2001 the fund had distributed over 8.5 million dollars in donations. Over 1000 children were left without a parent, and in many cases the principal breadwinner, this fund has provided much relief for the families of the victims.

There have been hundreds of articles written about this tragedy and at least one book. The book "On Top of the World" subtitled "Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, and 9/11: A Story of Loss and Renewal," by Tom Barbash; is a heartwarming book which chronicals how the company survived after 9/11.

The sheer numbers of those lost is difficult to grasp, the Cantor Fitzgerald Memorial page was set up as a place for family, friends to share the stories of their loved ones and for the rest of us to send our thoughts out to the families. I personally wanted to send out my thoughts to each family and I realized spending only 10 minutes on each post to their memorial page would take over 109 hours, this puts the loss into a scale that I still can not wrap my mind around. The following list from the Memorial page shows just how vast their loss was.

Every name that follows represents:

A person who has a mother and father who are grieving
A wife or husband who lost their spouse
A son or daughter who lost their father or mother
Someone who lost their best friend
A sister or brother who lost their sibling
A grandmother, grandfather; or grandson, granddaughter

Each name below represents perhaps more than a dozen people who tragically lost someone they cared about...